Hi @Maggie @TheVorticon @NatureLover @Historylover
Hi Maggie
I opened a thread on the subject of Self-Love and Self-Hatred last year - and I just had a bit of a read of the first and last pages there and I found a post of yours and a comment that particularly stands out
Maggie wrote
Waiting 2-4 hrs to see a dr while in pain, if we get annoyed, we get labeled, but their lack of respect goes unnoticed. It seems we are being silenced ( served ) in different ways.
What does this have to do with self love self hate, everything i think. Maybe change starts by thinking, then finding courage to say it so someone, then someone else and so on.
And I agree - I agree with so much of what you have said there and here as well - if we are discounted it becomes really hard to feel the strength to maintain our original opinion on the subject and to continue to feel positive about ourselves - it is extremely hard to feel good about ourselves when we are labeled as a hard person to deal with or a difficult patient
And I am sure I am both - but luckily I am okay about being myself in my old age - but how hard this is for people who have be brought up from infancy feeling helpless - lacking choices - not considered worthwhile - etc - where do we gain a better insight into ourselves
I am feeling a little fuzzy today - I was awake for a long time last night hearing gale force winds off the Southern Ocean and maybe I should wait until my head is clear to write a lot - to even read the whole thread we wrote over a year ago - but there is a comment on this thread I would like to mention first
NatureLover wrote
I discovered I was worth something, worth more than my father thought, and that it was his loss that he always thought I was worthless and could never see any good in me. To do this, I needed to separate out from him (as an adult of middle age!) and I also needed to tell him of his lifelong abuse and the damage it has done, which is also lifelong, although I've had a lot of healing through therapy. I told him, and he estranged me, which I didn't want at the time, but which worked out well for me and gave me a few years of space to get stronger in myself. (We are now back in occasional contact.)
Thanks for this comment - it is hard to overcome our mother's voice as it's the one we hear in the womb - and our father is the most important male in our lives as we are growing up - and what they think of us is paramount. I remember my father telling me that I took my children too seriously and they would start to think of themselves as important. To me they were - still are - and I didn't change my attitude toward them.
We start our lives so helpless - so vulnerable - and luckily we don't usually remember much about that - I have learned to respect myself but that was hard - obviously if my father didn't think I was important and my mother - enough said there - she was a very hard person to please and I gave up trying. But somehow during my middle years I didn't share my unpopular choices with the two people who had once had so much power and I was estranged too.
So - as I am still feeling fuzzy - I will end with a comment of History Lover - to be kind to ourselves - if we don't - who will?
In the meantime - I will tag all of you over to my thread on Self-love and Self-Hatred and I haven't read this today and it was written in August last year - I have naturally forgotten - but I invite you to read what people have written there
It is extremely hard to overcome the forces that originally shaped our lives but it can be done - I think we have to accept and let go a lot of the past to do it - and I will certainly write more here - and very glad you have opened the subject again Maggie
Dec
